


i won't say it

by pyrophane



Series: knocking me down with the palm of your eye [1]
Category: Pokemon GO
Genre: Accidental Domesticity, F/F, Other, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 16:04:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7580860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/pseuds/pyrophane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What,” Blanche says, slowly, “are you two doing in my apartment?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	i won't say it

**Author's Note:**

> i know that the official designs were only released today, and we still don't know... anything... about the team leaders, but i also know in my heart that blanche and candela are in love. can also be read as gen-ish ot3! 
> 
> for frida, since the existence of this fic is owed entirely to [this tweet](https://twitter.com/seersken/status/757343867628818437). title from 'i won't say (i'm in love)', from disney's hercules. i'm sorry.
> 
> edit: [translated into Italian](http://efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=3517777) by the lovely [Lyrtil](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrtil/pseuds/Lyrtil)!

 

 

 

 

“What,” Blanche says, slowly, “are you two doing in my apartment?”

Candela’s sprawled magnificently across her living room couch; Spark, spattered with mud, is on the floor in front of her, leaning back against the couch skirt. Blanche considers the tantalising possibility that the scene before her is simply the product of a hallucination induced by sleep deprivation. She squeezes her eyes shut, counts to three, wills them to disappear. When she opens her eyes, Candela’s still watching her patiently, intently, a smile playing at the corners of her lips. Spark lifts his hand and waves at her.

“Waiting for you to get here so we could have dinner,” Candela says, as if this is the most reasonable thing in the world to suggest. Spark nods, wiggling his eyebrows in an expressive and frankly incomprehensible pattern.

“I don’t seem to remember providing either of you with a key, or, in fact, permission to enter my apartment at all.”

“Luckily, Spark’s a pretty dab hand at lockpicking.” Candela ruffles Spark’s hair. “Who would’ve thought?”

“Get out,” Blanche hisses.

“But we just got here,” Candela says.

“And we brought food,” Spark says, gesturing at the plastic bags sitting on the coffee table. “Okonomiyaki from that place down the road you really like, though it’s getting kinda cold.” He peers up at her. “Are you grinding your teeth? That can cause headaches and permanent jaw pain, you know, like this one guy I knew—”

“Is there any particular reason why you’re covered in mud and currently ruining both my upholstery and my carpet?”

“Ran into some complications with a Tangela,” Spark explains. He solicitously brushes a single speck of dirt from his grass-stained trousers. “You could even say… I got into a bit of a _tangle—_ ”

“I don't know him,” Candela says.

Blanche presses her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose, exhales. “Fine. You know where the bathroom is—you couldn’t have showered _before_ strewing topsoil all over my living room?”

“Didn’t know where you put the towels.” Spark has the grace to at least look apologetic; Candela, on the other hand, is shimmering with suppressed laughter. Blanche fixes Candela with the most withering stare in her repertoire, which has about as much effect as a baby Weedle attack.

“Your towel’s in the third drawer of the vanity,” Blanche snaps.

“Cool.” Spark pushes himself to his feet and disappears down the hallway.

Candela’s looking at her with that incisive intensity again, but Blanche is adamant in her refusal to break under Candela’s gaze, or whatever the hell it is Candela wants her to do. She busies herself with the routine mundanities of returning home: hanging up her coat, unpacking her satchel, arranging the day’s datasheets across her desk.

“Nice wetsuit,” Candela says. “Really appreciate the whole lab-assistant-slash-part-time-scuba-diver look you’re going for.”

Blanche rounds on her. “It’s not a _wetsuit_ , it’s _flame-resistant—_ my current area of fieldwork requires me to handle a lot of fire-types, not that you’d know—”

“Yeah, I wouldn't, since we haven’t seen you in nearly a week?”

“I’ve been—busy, in the lab—”

“How much sleep have you gotten in the past three days?”

Blanche pauses. “I’m still conscious.”

“And you’re out of milk!”

“Okay, so?”

“So?” Candela unfolds herself from the couch and brandishes an accusatory finger at her. “When have you ever been out of milk? You drink a glass every day for your, like, food pyramid dairy requirement! You buy milk twice a week! I bet you haven’t gone out for groceries the last time we were here and Spark chugged half a litre straight from the bottle.”

“... Wait.” Blanche narrows her eyes. “Since when have you been doing stocktake on my fridge?”

It’s Candela’s turn to pin her with a withering stare. “Blanche. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I practically live here? I’ve stayed overnight so often that I have a toothbrush in your bathroom?” Candela’s expression shifts to incredulity. “You haven’t noticed. You’ve assigned Spark a towel and a shelf on your vanity for all his hair products, and half my gear is in your apartment, and you haven’t noticed that _we are living together._ ”

Blanche blinks. The last time she’d gone down to the shops—sometime within the past week, she’s sure—she’d grabbed a jar of marmalade off the shelf without thinking, even though she’d rather brave an encounter with an army of wild Muks than so much as touch anything citrus-flavoured. By the time she remembered that it was, in fact, _Candela_ with the insatiable appetite for breakfast preserves and not herself, she was halfway through unloading her basket at the counter, and figured it would be too rude to put it back on the shelf where it belonged. And Spark did have an alarming habit of leaving egg caches all around the apartment as a temporary incubation space. It’s—possible Blanche may have overlooked a few key details about their current living arrangements.

“We’re—rivals, though?” Blanche tries. “I’m pretty sure we—”

“—are also flatmates at this point, so you might as well just give us both a key so we can move in for real, officially.” Candela’s grin is like wildfire. “And I know what you’re thinking—we’ll figure out chores and rent and who does what and that stuff later, we're not _freeloaders_. But hey!”

Blanche draws herself up to her full height, an infuriating few centimetres shorter than Candela. “Well, if that’s all, I have a dissertation on the correlation between the spawn location and evolutionary tendencies of the common Doduo to write,” she says. “You are distracting me.”

“Am I?” Candela steps closer, tilts her head.

“ _Yes_.” Thankfully, Blanche’s voice doesn’t waver, though her pulse is battering at her throat. She fixes her eyes on the sweep of Candela’s collarbones where they emerge from her ridiculously oversized collar. Drags her gaze upwards, past the curl of Candela’s mouth, to the challenge in her gaze. Takes a step closer, too.

“Not to interrupt or anything—” and Blanche jerks away from Candela so quickly her foot snags on the carpet and she plummets backwards, thinks, _this is it, farewell my dignity,_ and—

—Candela’s got an arm snagged around her waist and a hand firm between her shoulderblades, keeping her steady. Blanche has time to register the lush sweep of Candela’s eyelashes as she _winks_ at her—the audacity!—before Candela manoeuvres her upright with a murmured _watch your step_. Blanche hates her. She’s sure that her cheeks are a furious, burning red.

“—but, uh, I used up all your conditioner so you’re gonna need to get more, just thought I’d let you know. So I’m just gonna go, um, heat up the food.” Spark coughs, grabs the takeaway boxes out of the bags, and wanders into the kitchen. Blanche hears the fridge door open, then close, followed by all of the cupboard doors, one by one. There’s an alarming series of metallic screeches that Blanche chooses to ignore.

“Close one,” Candela says. Her eyes are glittering with mirth. “Aren’t you glad I’m around?”

“Well,” Blanche says, clearing her throat. “Don’t think I’m going to go easy on you just because we’re—cohabiting now.”

Candela smiles, quicksilver-bright and ferociously sharp. “Wouldn’t want it any other way.”

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> not to worry, spark gets blanche a dry-cleaning voucher as a housewarming gift.
> 
> please let me know what you think in the comments, or drop by my [tumblr](http://delineative.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/ennezahard)! [here's](http://delineative.tumblr.com/post/147964933820/fic-i-wont-say-it) the tumblr post on this fic if you're so inclined.


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